Facing the 'end of life' challenge for mobile, cloud services

This week, two very high profile cloud-delivered services were forced to deal with even higher-profile “end of life” issues: T-Mobile and Microsoft said they were closing the Danger Service, which worked with T-Mobile’s once-popular Sidekick devices; and Google dealt with a different kind of calamity, admitting it lost account data for tens of thousands of users of its Gmail service, effectively “end-of-lifing” valuable customer data, at least temporarily (Google said it is busy restoring the data).

The T-Mobile/Danger story, in particular, illustrates one of the key challenges with cloud services: what happens to customers if cloud (or in this case cloud/mobile) services don’t pan out for the service provider?

There’s no easy answer to that question. To some extent, the user is, frankly, screwed. A service they relied on is gone and there’s not much they can do about it. Sometimes, apps or data can be moved to a new service. Sidekick users have a couple of options. T-Mobile is offering a Web tool to let Sidekick users export their info to another device or computer. They’ll also help users out in person at a T-Mobile store. T-Mobile is even trying to resurrect the Sidekick brand by building new devices under that name but running on Google’s Android OS.

But each time a major cloud service closes up shop there’s “psychological” damage that impacts the entire mobile/cloud market: users realize there’s a possible but real price to be paid betting on platforms that might not end up as winners. That price depends on just how “all-in” customers go in relying on cloud services. And each time a service fails, it puts a seed of a doubt in the minds of all cloud users: will this service I rely on – for email, for SMS, for storing my data, for streaming my music, etc. etc. – be here tomorrow?

Security concerns are most often cited as the biggest impediment to cloud service adoption. This week’s Gmail data loss is evidence of how serious cloud providers must take security and service assurance. But “comfort level” with end of life service issues might hinder the market as well, especially if we see a boom/bust cycle with many services ending up shuttering their virtual doors.

For service providers, there are important questions to consider as well: When is the right time to shut a service down, versus letting it limp along, even unprofitably? How damaging is such a closure to the service provider’s brand and reputation? And how aggressive should a service provider be in rolling out new services if it can’t, in highly competitive cloud and mobile markets, ensure it can keep the services its customers depend on up and running for the long term?

There are some very large vendors and operators making very big bets on some cloud services these days facing just these precarious questions. Consider Microsoft, which actually faces this challenge on a number of fronts. Here’s one example: will its Zune music service survive? And does each new subscriber it gains move it one step closer to success, or just add one more customer it will in the end disappoint (and possibly lose forever, not just for that cloud service but many others)?

For service providers of all stripes and sizes – from mobile operators to content and app providers and others – there’s perhaps no more important question to consider when betting the brand on new mobile and cloud services.